Wednesday 3 February 2016

The Blog Empire Grows and Milestones Ahead

Hi everyone,



Very exciting news for me today. My recent articles reviewing 30k units has attracted the attention of Rob Baer from the excellent Spikey Bits, and he has asked me to start doing 30k articles for their own blog.

I am a big fan of spikey bits, in particular their YouTube channel which is an invaluable resource for all manner of reviews, unboxing, guides, tutorials and generally anything hobby related. So it was quite the humbling feeling to be specifically asked to write for them. 

This comes at a time when my blog is approaching a few milestones (of the arbitrary nature of course!) that I'd just like to touch on. Normally I am more of the secretive type as you may have guessed, but I thought I'd just write a little about these different aspects of blogging and how they have impacted on me both as a hobbyist and personally. 


Views

At the time of writing, I am approaching 50'000 views on blogger, and my Google+ profile is closing in 1'000'000 views at the moment. This is a mindblowing amount of numbers to me, and to think that when I started I was tentatively hoping for around 3'000 views in my first 12 months! The traffic comes from a nice variety of sources as well, with the major three being from Faeit212, google+/google and facebook. 

In this regard I really have to thank Dave Weston of 40kAddict, for pointing my nose in the right direction for spreading your own blog, particularly with some excellent written pieces on his own blog that help aspiring hobby bloggers, do go check it out on the link above if its something you are interested in!


Nearly 1 year old!

Despite my idea of getting 3'000 views in the first year, I honestly did not expect to still be blogging after 6 months!! I find that in any walk of life a dazzling example can sit you on the precipice between inspiration and demoralisation. With such fantastic blogs in my reading list, including but by no means limited to 40kaddict, objective secured, the burning eye, from the fang, st andrews wargaming, it can be quite the challenge mentally to not compare yourself to them and just bumble on. I do still compare myself to them, but having met or chatted in depth to the authors of all the above blogs, and every one of them being down to the ground fine gentleman, they are greatly more sources of inspiration rather than demoralisation.

I tip my hat to all of you sirs. 


Community

That leads nicely into the community section of this post. The blogging community has been absolutely fantastic. I have had perhaps 3 unpleasant experiences whilst disseminating my work and those all came from Facebook! That flies in the face of every encouraging word, understanding tip, or mutually felt commiseration that permeates the rest of my experience. 

This is reflected by having nearly 1000 comments now on my blog (with half being mine...), that have a gone a long way to shaping the direction of my hobby and improving my painting, modelling and army building. 

The improvement of my skills is certainly directly correlated to the level of interaction I enjoy with readers, with many regular commenteers (I prefer this spelling, much grander!) such as Dave Weston (again!), Nick Thrower, WestRider (an invaluable source of rules corrections!) NafNaf, Mike Corrm and many others (whose names elude me right now, I'm sorry! I'm writing this at work at 5am...) really pushing me to be better in the friendliest possible way. 


The Future

I am looking forward to celebrating the first birthday of the blog, which I hope to do with a giveaway of some kind! This will be coming some time in March/April, I haven't actually checked the exact date for a while so I'm hazy on it. 

I'm also planning on doing a few videos for the blog, reviewing items I buy, such as my recent forgeworld purchases, but also just to muse about things and perhaps some tutorial videos if I can get some techniques down to a quality where I think they are deserving of a tutorial! This is very much a plan for the last quarter of the year as I don't have great experience with video editing software and I will be moving house soon anyway, so a new desk area will have to be created!

I'm also hoping to do a few video battle reports if possible though this is even further away than the above paragraph!

Tournaments are hopefully going to become a bigger aspect of the blog, with me attending as many as I can feasibly afford with both time and money. But this year I should be attending at least 5 different events and hopefully an additionally 2 if I can fit them in. I'm also going to be making an effort to play games with people farther afield from Bristol. This includes visiting Lawrence Baker from Table Top Tactics, who've I've been chatting too for a while about appearing on his channel, and I also intend to challenge the Geeks from Geeks 40k!

I hope these things interest you as future content, and I'd just like to say thanks to everyone who reads my blog regularly, semi regularly and has either enjoyed my content or commented to help me along. 

Peace out,

Rob

25 comments:

  1. Awesome stuff mate, glad to hear the blog is going from strength to strength! I love a good arbitrary milestone or two but these definitely aren't! Sounds like you're making a splash in terms of your posts too, let's hope that they're successful for you!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks man! People like you keep me going with your comments and your own excellent blog content! I've personally found the blog community awesome :)

      Delete
    2. Very supportive, it was so good to meet people at blogwars too, and put faces to names!

      Delete
  2. Wow, congrats on being 'head-hunted', well jel ;) Seriously though it's well deserved, you've put a lot of effort into your blog and I'm sure the plans you have will bring in more readers. I still equate a lot of gaming back to me Kendo training, you take part in that to help others, as well as yourself, improve. By raising their game they in turn push you to try harder. I've certianly been inspired by your consistent blogging [and others] and have made more effort accordingly, so thanks for helping me to be better.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Incidentally I was amazed at your G+ profile views. It's not something I've looked into much, maybe I need to do pay more attention because I've just looked at my own. Like I said the other day it's not about the numbers sometimes the numbers give you a bit of a thrill, but it certainly made me wonder who is that that's viewing these profiles? G+ has never been as big as Facebook but these figures are jaw dropping.

      Also, I get what you're saying about those odd negative situations, sometimes just those few can really knock back all the good the positive posts, support and comments you get.

      Delete
    2. Hahaha right place right time I think Dave!! I'm not a patch on you... yet ;) funny you should mention Kendo, I've been looking to get into recently, any advice? Well I'm glad to pay back some of the inspiration I got from you start in the first place, I certainly hold you up as one of the paragons of blogging.

      I think G+ calculates views for times anyone views your post, even if they don't click through, so while I like the big number, I don't take toooo much from it.

      The first comment on my first spikey bits post was an excellent example of someone with nothing good to say but saying it anyway!

      Delete
  3. Congrats Rob! Good to see the blog growing from strength to strength (as well as the progress on your amazing armies).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cheers Mike! I really enjoy the twin nature of our blogs, especially when we focus on different things, with your battle reports being some of the best old school battle reports out there in my opinion, up with SN battle reports I must say :)

      Delete
    2. Much appreciated! Guess I will need to start reading Spikey Bits now to see your new articles!

      Delete
  4. Congratulations! Getting asked to do a guest series is a pretty major milestone in and of itself.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah I was buzzing when Rob Baer sent me an email, my head is getting stuck in doors :P

      Delete
  5. Congratulations mate! I look forward to reading your articles. I am sooo looking forward to the Dark Angels getting their turn at Forgeworld. When/if they make a Lion El'Johnson figure I won't be able to resist jumping on the 30K bandwagon :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not another one, haha!

      I went the other way back with the original Angels of Death codex - Blood Angels are my first love! I think Sanguinius will have to be my forgeworld purchase.

      Delete
    2. I dabbled with Blood Angels back in the day too; one of my favourite gaming memories is gunning down Kharne in 2nd Ed. with Dante's meltapistol, and Brother-Captain Tycho is still my favourite 40K character :-)

      Delete
    3. I think Blood Angels are just one of those iconic elements of 40k. Dark Angels certainly have the history (and now the rules!) but as befits their background they don't have quite the same striking visuals.

      I think that's one of the things that really makes 40k appeal to people - even within a faction like space marines you'll have your favourites. I have an ongoing banter exchange with a mate about my Iron Fists because their paint scheme is not dissimilar to Space Wolves, who are not my favourite chapter!

      Delete
    4. ANGELS OF DEATH! I love them both really, you know your a Dark Traitor at heart really Nick ;)

      Thanks Marc, I really appreciate everyone that comments on my blog! I'm pretty bad at commenting on others myself even though I read them, I'm trying to make a conscious effort to be a better member of the community!

      Delete
  6. Nice one well deserved and good luck

    ReplyDelete
  7. Awesome news dude, thoroughly deserved :)
    Congrats on the blogging milestone. Your blog has just exploded which is great news, and I hope it grows even more :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Naf :) I will definitely credit you as being the person that pushed me over into blogging in the first place! I wish I had the time to hang around TDC still, but the blog and expanded hobbying along with real life has left little time sadly! I miss the banter!

      Delete
  8. Only just found your blog so I can help add to the views, everything is well written and going straight on my blog roll as well. While I like to think comments are better than views I find I struggle with either. I may need to up my content game.

    Not sure how to even check G+ views.

    Looking forward to seeing what you do next. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Rory :) I really appreciate that! I will be sure to check your blog out! I don't think my content is super good, I just ram it on every social platform I can find :P I am a blog whore!

      Delete
  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Congratulations. I enjoy reading blogs like yours. The reviews and hobby tips and pointers are ideal for people like myself coming back into the hobby after years away. Keep it up.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good to know mate, I went through the same thing a couple of years ago, its amazing how much you need to get in the know on quickly!

      Delete